SYRIA ARRESTS MKO TERRORISTS

TEHRAN (FNA)- Security forces in Syria have arrested five Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO also known as the MEK, PMOI and NCR) terrorists along with 35 armed insurgents, local media report said on Sunday.

Aksalser news website quoted informed security sources in Syria as saying that 40 armed elements had been arrested along the country’s borders on Monday when they were trying to infiltrate into Syria.

“It has been revealed after interrogations that five of these armed people are members of the MKO,” the source said on the condition of the anonymity.

The MKO members also confessed that the terrorist grouplet is training Syrian terrorists on Turkey’s soil and under the support of some Arab and western states.

A Saudi colonel recently apprehended by the Syrian security forces disclosed that the terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization has played a major role in the recent conflicts in Syria.

According to the colonel, a number of 20,000 terrorists, among them a number of MKO members, were due to attack Damascus from four directions and occupy the city after the explosion inside the Syrian national security headquarters in the capital on June 18.

Also, the MKO terrorist group announced last week that it had hosted a number of Syrian dissidents at the headquarters of its ringleader Massoud Rajavi in France.

The attack on Damascus was foiled by the Syrian troops, but the colonel did not have any further details as he had been arrested in the midst of the attack.

Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011 with organized attacks by well-armed gangs against Syrian police forces and border guards being reported across the country.

Hundreds of people, including members of the security forces, have been killed, when some protest rallies turned into armed clashes.

The government blames outlaws, saboteurs, and armed terrorist groups for the deaths, stressing that the unrest is being orchestrated from abroad.

In October 2011, calm was eventually restored in the Arab state after President Assad started a reform initiative in the country, but Israel, the US and its Arab allies are seeking hard to bring the country into chaos through any possible means. Tel Aviv, Washington and some Arab capitals have been staging various plots in the hope of increasing unrests in Syria.